A Microsoft representative demonstrates how Xbox Live will work with Kinect to play content from movies, music, and the latest addition: Live television.

Xbox Live and Kinect at E3 2011.

Xbox Live and Kinect at E3 2011.

Xbox Live and Kinect at E3 2011.

Xbox Live and Kinect at E3 2011.

UFC president Dana White announces that the Ultimate Fighting Championship will make its way to Xbox Live with new interactive content.

Ultimate Fighting Championship will make its way to Xbox Live.

Ultimate Fighting Championship will make its way to Xbox Live.

Designer Cliff Bleszinski and rapper Ice-T play Gears of War 3 on stage together.

Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T play Gears of War 3

Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T play Gears of War 3

Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T play Gears of War 3

Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T play Gears of War 3

Cliff Bleszinski and Ice-T play Gears of War 3

Ryse, developed by Crytek (Far Cry) is a Kinect action game set during the fall of the Roman empire.

Ryse for the Kinect.

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, arriving Nov. 15, will remaster and remix the classic original game for Xbox 360.

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, arriving Nov. 15

Forza Motorsport 4 at E3 2011.

Forza Motorsport 4 at E3 2011.

Forza Motorsport 4 at E3 2011.

Forza Motorsport 4 at E3 2011.

LOS ANGELES — Microsoft unveiled new games for its Kinect motion controller during its E3 press conference Monday, closing with a big reveal: Halo 4 will be released for the 2012 holiday season.
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Fans will go gaga over the Halo announcements, which include the far-off sequel plus a remake of the first game called Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, which will be released Nov. 15 of this year. But Microsoft spent the most time talking up new games and experiences for Kinect, its camera-based controller that also responds to voice commands.

Kinect Star Wars, which lets you slash robots with a lightsaber by waving your closed fists around, and Disneyland Adventures, a virtual version of the legendary theme park, were two of the major Kinect games shown at the conference. Microsoft also said hit indie game Minecraft would be released for Kinect this winter, and that it would unveil a series of tech demos called Kinect Fun Labs, which show new features for the innovative controller, with concepts similar to cool hacks done by gamers in the wild.

Microsoft also said it would bring live television to Kinect this year, letting you use your Xbox 360 as a DVR to record TV shows. Microsoft search engine Bing will be added to the game console, letting you search for content using your voice.

Overall, Microsoft’s presser was light on new announcements. Instead, the company showed new videos and demos of games that it had previously tipped at prior E3 shows.

Wired.com’s live-blog coverage of the event follows:

9:27 a.m. We are here! The briefing is scheduled to start in just a few minutes. There’s a “content warning” on the big screens here at the Galen Center; we are warned that the videos we’re about to see contain images of intense violence. Awesome.

9:30 a.m. The music has changed. That means it is starting, I think. “Everything is so green,” Jason Schreier says sitting next to me. He has never been to an E3 before apparently. He missed the Cirque du Soleil thing where we were all in light-up ponchos.

9:31 a.m. Things kick off with a video of Modern Warfare 3. Oh no, it’s actually a live demo. Somebody is on stage playing it. AHAHAHAH the controller got unsynced and it paused. Don’t laugh, it’s happened to you. Just not in the first two seconds of a Microsoft press conference. Unless you’re Peter Moore.

9:33 a.m. The army men are swimming through water. Then they reach a checkpoint. “Checkpoint reached,” it says.

9:34 a.m. They are swimming after a submarine. They plant something on it. They leave! They see the ruined Manhattan skyline. They’ve been in the Hudson River or something all this time. Gross. That’s never gonna wash off.

9:36 a.m. Now the submarine is above the water and they are infiltrating it, shooting the other men. “Pow pow pow!” go their guns. The demo skips ahead to a new section, and water is filling the submarine. They find more men! They shoot them, too.

9:37 a.m. The army men jump in a big, inflatable, pool-toy raft and go zipping down the river, shooting with wild abandon. Navy ships and things are all over the place. Everything is either on fire now or was in the recent past. They steer the pool toy into a helicopter and it takes off. Majestic war music plays. The end!

9:41 a.m. Representatives for Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer intro the game, and then Xbox’s Don Mattrick takes the stage to welcome us. On behalf of Microsoft, he’d like to thank the fans for making last year the biggest year in Xbox history.

9:43 a.m. Crystal Dynamics takes the stage to show us a demo of Tomb Raider.

9:45 a.m. This is the same demo that has been described in Game Informer, Official PlayStation Magazine, etc. Wired.com will have impressions of the Tomb Raider demo during E3 week. For now, the audience is watching as a young Lara Croft slowly moves her way through a scary-ass cavern, trying not to die.

9:50 a.m. The Tomb Raider demo comes to a close with Lara making a daring escape out of the tunnels of hell. She sees a sweet-ass pirate ship on the horizon as the demo ends.

9:51 a.m. Tomb Raider will be released in fall 2012, so don’t hold your breath. Now, EA Sports President Peter Moore takes the stage to show us four EA Sports games that will feature Kinect support in 2012. People applaud. They must not be live-blogging this. Madden, Tiger Woods, FIFA will all have Kinect support.

9:52 a.m. Moore turns it over to BioWare’s Ray Muzyka, who will talk about Mass Effect, and apparently how it will be integrated with Kinect? That seems to be the implication. Yes: It will support Kinect for voice recognition, he says. You’ll be able to converse with characters in the game just by using your voice. “It’s unlike anything else out there,” he says. Let’s find out …

9:53 a.m. Wow. Apparently instead of selecting dialog options, you actually just say the line that’s on-screen, and that’ll select the dialog option. You can also use voice control to tell your combat buddies what to do in battle.

9:55 a.m. We’ll see even more at the EA press briefing later today, he says. And now it’s time to look at Ubisoft’s shooter, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier.

9:57 a.m. You know, I would totally love to play a military game that actually was set to opera singers, instead of them just using them for their slow-motion trailers. Yves Guillemot of Ubi is onstage talking about how Ghost Recon will use Kinect.

9:58 a.m. You can use Kinect to assemble and disassemble your weapons, adding different parts in a futuristic motion and voice interface to add parts. You can use the voice commands “Optimize” and “Randomize” to automatically create the perfect gun for any situation, then test the guns out by holding your arms like you were holding the gun.

10:01 a.m. All future Tom Clancy games will use Kinect, Guillemot says. Xbox Live’s Mark Whitten is now onstage to talk about the online service and what new features will be added to it.

10:02 a.m. Unveiling a brand new Kinect-enabled Xbox 360 dashboard. It’s very elegant, lowercase text on a white background. Using voice, you can navigate through all your entertainment, from movies to music to games. This year, says Whitten, Microsoft will grow its entertainment catalog from hundreds of thousands of pieces of info to millions. YouTube is coming to Xbox Live, for example.

10:04 a.m. Bing is coming to Xbox with voice control. It will search Xbox, Hulu and other content providers to find the entertainment you’re looking for. “Xbox Bing Lego,” she says. A menu is instantly pulled up with every bit of Lego content on Xbox all pop up. Games, movies, etc. “Xbox Bing X-Men,” she says, and every X-Men game and movie is found. “You say it, Xbox finds it,” Whitten says.

10:06 a.m. LIve television is coming to Xbox 360, he says. They’re partnering with TV providers around the world for it. Your Xbox will become a DVR. Launching in fall 2011.

10:07 a.m. Interesting how they’re pushing voice control versus gesturing. They’re not showing anyone using gesture controls to play TV and movies, just voice.

10:08 a.m. The president of Ultimate Fighting Championship is introducing UFC content on Xbox Live.

10:09 a.m. Phil Spencer of “Microsoft Studios” comes out. Maybe I’m behind the curve but is the division not called “Microsoft Game Studios” anymore? With any luck he is here to show us some actually unannounced videogames. Every single game, demo, experience they will show us right now is only on Xbox 360. He’s starting with Gears of War 3.

10:12 a.m. Cliff Bleszinski takes the stage to play Gears of War 3 with his friend Ice-T. They start playing a new section of the campaign cooperatively, although we only see Clifford’s screen on the big screen behind them.

10:15 a.m. The men shoot a giant monster in the eyeballs. It looks pretty painful for the monster. If I were to play this game I would want Ice-T as my partner, that is for sure.

10:17 a.m. Gears demo is over. Ice-T says he will reunite his rock band Body Count to do an original song for the game’s Horde mode.

10:18 a.m. Oh, it’s time for this Roman action game they teased last year. Let’s see how this is.

10:21 a.m. Time to talk about Forza Motorsport 4, Microsoft’s “vision for the future of racing.” Apparently it will have Kinect voice, but also head-tracking, so you can turn your head to look around as you drive in first-person. Pretty neat.

10:24 a.m. Here’s Peter Molyneux to talk about Lionhead’s Kinect game. No, not Milo & Kate, the one you want! Fable: The Journey.

10:25 a.m. We begin the demo by riding a horse carriage in first person down a trail. We have to destroy creatures by firing magic at them with hand gestures. “Looks like it’s on rails,” observes Jason. The guy doing the demo does some crazy stuff with his hands to build up a giant magic spell. So you basically do the hand jive to cast magic. Coming in 2012.

10:28 a.m. Wow. Minecraft is coming to Xbox 360 and Kinect this winter.

10:29 a.m. Kinect Disneyland Adventures. They’re re-creating the entire Disney park as a Kinect game. You can go to all the attractions, hang out with Disney characters and ride the rides. Two kids are onstage playing “Peter Pan’s Flight.” One kid slams into the wall and totally eats it. It is funny to me. These kids are doing a great job pretending to play this video.

10:32 a.m. And now it’s time for another game that was unveiled here at the Galen Center during the Cirque du Soleil thing: Kinect Star Wars. The video shows flying creatures, hitting things with lightsabers, all the stuff you’d imagine. The lights come up for a live demo. “Lightsaber on!” says the guy onstage, exactly how a Star Wars character would say it if the movies were terrible.

10:36 a.m. Yes, so this is pretty much the first game everybody thought of back when they saw the Wii in 2005. Microsoft got done what Nintendo didn’t.

10:37 a.m. Tim Schafer has arrived to show us Once Upon a Monster, Double Fine’s Sesame Street game for Kinect.

10:40 a.m. It’ll come out this fall. Now it’s time for Kinect creative director Kudo Tsunoda.

10:43 a.m. Tsunoda introduces Kinect Fun Labs. You know all of those crazy Kinect hackers who’ve done experimental things with the device using the PC? Microsoft will be bringing several of those concepts to the Xbox 360, which all Xbox Live users will be able to try out. They show a bit of software that scans you and turns you into an Xbox avatar, scanning your clothing and face, too. A demo called “Kinect Sparkler” lets you take pictures of yourself and draw on the picture with your fingers. You can draw in 3-D, doodling on your image and then view it from different angles just by moving around.

10:47 a.m. You can scan in your own objects, creating a 3-D digital version of them in seconds that you can animate. These aren’t games, they’re tech demos that let you try these new concepts. Apparently Kinect Fun Labs is going live today, so go check it out while I’m stuck here writing about this conference.

10:48 a.m. Kinect Sports: Season Two Baseball, skiing, tennis, etc. Apparently the developer is Big Park. Six new sports. Golf, football also a part of it. Use voice commands to change your club. Adjust your body position to line up the putt. This could be really cool.

10:52 a.m. Football can be played with two players at once, one passing and the other catching and running.

10:53 a.m. Harmonix producer Kasson Crooker is here to show Dance Central 2. He brings out another Harmonix producer and they dance together. That’s right, two-player simultaneous dancing, the one feature that the first game really lacked. They are really dancing up a storm.

10:56 a.m. This year, says Mattrick, Xbox 360 will go from being the No. 1 console in North America to the No. 1 console globally. He leaves us with “the dawn of a new trilogy for Xbox 360.” Yes, that’s right, Microsoft is announcing … Halo 4. And, uh, apparently 5 and 6 too, if Mattrick’s comment is to be believed. Holiday 2012 for No. 4, he says. Conference over!

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